Opération secrète

Decent and thrilling WWII espionage film with the great Cornel Wilde excellently accompanied by a known support cast . This is an espionage flic dealing with O. S. S. Operatives working behind enemy lines and based on fact , it concerns secret agents and a double-agent who encounter themselves working for both contenders in the 40s , as the Russian secret service and Allied Secret service , while being mercilessly pursued by Nazis . A few years after the end of WW2 a special French military commission is put to judge a past happening , that's why they summon witnesses who could shed light on an incident that took place during the war . It is followed by a long flashback in which one group of mostly French Foreign Legion soldiers , they are all French except one who is American (Cornel Wilde) , refused to surrender to the Germans and being holed-up in a farm house continued to offer hard resistance and defence to the Germans . Their officer, Capt. Armand Dupree (Paul Picerni) asks for the surrendering . While under attack by German forces, the French army unit discovers there is a traitor in their midst , feeding the Germans information. After the Armistice some of them, prisoners of war in German POW camps, go away and joined various resistance groups . The American , Peter Forrester , joins the US Army and is recruited by US Intelligence. O. S. S for his language skills and for the fact he had lived in Germany and France before the war . Then he accepts a dangerous mission behind enemy lines , in occupied France , Operation Secret starts and along the way Forrester meets a mysterious nun , Maria Corbet (Phyllis Thaxter) who helps him . Later on , things go wrong .

This agreeable film packs intrigue , noisy action , suspense , warlike feats, twists, turns and being quite entertaining, adding a first-rate main and support cast . However , there's a lot of WWII stock footage , including bombing , allied attacks and planes . The story was based on Peter Ortiz who was an OSS agent in World War II in France and was also originally based on the World War II director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). In fact , this role was also essential on the film 13 Rue Madeleine (1946) by Henry Hathaway with James Cagney , Richard Conte , but due to military intelligence and secrecy reasons, Hollywood studios were prevented by the U. S. government from mentioning the OSS in movies during World War II, which is the case here . Cornel Wilde gives a good acting as a spy who finds out one of the agents-in-training is actually a double agent and takes the risk of going in after him. Ample and stunning supporting cast providing magnificent acting , such as : Steve Cochran , Karl Malden , Paul Picerni , Lester Matthews , Dan O'Herlihy , Harlan Warde , Jay Novello, among others.

This well-paced in cracking style flick was competently directed by Lewis Seiler, as he usually works very well , being capable handled in spectacular photography -though is really necessary a perfect remastering- , and adding enjoyable scenarios . Seiler was assistant director before directing a number of two-reel comedies . He was closely associated with Tom Mix Westerns during the 1920s. He spent much of the 1930s at Warner Brothers, resulting in some of that studio's "grittier gangster pictures" and "social drama" films as Crime School (1938), King of Underground (1939), Hell's Kitchen (1939), to name a few and making movies in all kind of genres , such as : Over-Exposed , Battle Stations , Women's Prison, The Bamboo Prison, The System , The Winning Team , The Tanks Are Coming, Day D, hora H , Whiplash , If I'm Lucky , Molly and Me , standing out in wartime genre, as he was responsible for what is generally deemed to be one of the finest war pictures to come out of Hollywood : Guadalcanal (1943). Retiring from motion pictures in 1958, he turned to television where he kept busy up to the time of his death. Rating : 6.5/10 . Well worth watching . Essential and indispensable watching for WWII buffs.

This film has all the necessary ingredients to be a good WW 2 movie. However, the script is a bit suspect from two angles; it bites off far more than it can chew, and it smacks of anti-communist sympathies; most likely because it was made during the McCarthy period of communist witch hunts.

Cornell Wilde and Karl Malden are excellent in their roles, and the storyline, if not very believable, is still quite interesting from a cinematic point of view. Wilde's character gets out of more jams than a taxi driver in Midtown New York City. However, if one can suspend disbelief, the film can be entertaining.

I watched "Operation Secret" on the Fast32 streaming service (which is an excellent source of Western and war films) and was very impressed. Cornel Wilde was good enough, but Karl Malden stole the acting honours, with Steve Cochran doing well as the French resistance leader.

A couple of minor gripes: there was no way that the Resistance fighters could have filmed such close-up footage of the V1 bomber and the tunnel into the cliffs was very brightly illuminated.

Being released in 1952 the makers couldn't resist the temptation to include some anti-Communist propaganda.

But overall one of the best Resistance "B" films I've ever seen.

There have been some outstanding movies about underground forces in Europe during WWII. There have been some excellent movies about espionage during WWII. And, there have been a number of very good movies that combine espionage and underground efforts. "Operation Secret" is far and away the very best of the latter, with a lot of intrigue and mystery tossed in. The film combines spy efforts with underground operations, and then adds some combat scenes and aerial bombing footage along with the mystery and intrigue. It involves a court inquiry after the war, and a story told in flashbacks from various characters.

Just as with "Where Eagles Dare," this film story is fictitious, but is about real subjects of the war. In the former, it was the efforts to knock out Norwegian plants before the Nazis could use them to produce heavy water for use in German nuclear arms plans. In "Operation Secret," the real subjects were Germany's V-2 rockets and jet aircraft.

This film excels in a number of areas. The plot and script are first- rate, and the acting is first-rate by the whole cast. The direction is excellent, as are the cinematography and the scenes. This may be one of Cornel Wilde's best performances, and Karl Malden gives a first-rate performance. To top it all off, the movie has some actual German footage of the V-2 rocket firings, and the actual footage of the earliest German jet aircraft tests. I recall seeing such tests only once before; so this is very rare among WWII movies.

I'm surprised that so few have seen this movie by this late date. I don't recall ever having seen it before, but I've added it to my film library. Now that it's on DVD, more folks should want to buy it. I think it's a "must" for any serious war film library. If you're not a collector, watch for its showing on TV. I highly recommend this excellent, interesting, intriguing and entertaining film. For a bit of trivia, in an early scene of a flight from New York to Paris, presumably around the time the film was made, 1952, the pilot announces over the plane's PA system that the flight will take "about 13 hours." That was the speed of the four-engine prop planes before the advent of commercial jet service.

Cornel Wilde stars in this World War II drama Operation Secret in which most of the film is done in flashback by witnesses at a post war French tribunal. The object of the inquiry is to determine who killed Maquis resistance leader Paul Picerni.

This film was about the only Marine who may have served in the European Theater of World War II. Wilde is quite the colorful character and what a background he has. He does a hitch in the Marine Corps during peacetime and then enlists in the French Foreign Legion where he and fellow Legionaire Karl Malden just simply refuse to surrender until wounded and ordered to by Captain Steve Cochran. After a stint in a Prison Camp he's repatriated back to France whereupon he flees to Great Britain and tries to enlist in the Marines again. The Marines take him, but rather than send him to the Pacific, Wilde is given spy training and sent back to France where he eventually hooks up with the Maquis.

That the Maquis had a lot of Communists in it is a given fact. But remember this was the beginning of the Cold War so some anti-Communism gets worked into the plot. Many members of the Resistance do not want to give plans for the new Nazi jet airplanes to the Americans and British. That sets up the conflict as Wilde has to deal with both Germans and people in the Maquis who want to do him in.

To say the least I found the whole premise quite bizarre. But I've always liked Cornel Wilde on the screen and this is far from the worst film he ever did. In fact his portrayal of a spy who has to think fast on his feet is quite good.

Tstifying at the tribunal are Malden, Cochran, Jay Novello playing a former Gestapo man, and an ersatz nun played by Phyllis Thaxter. Eventually the murder of Picerni is solved and the perpetrator faces French justice.

Why they had to invent such a wild (no pun intended)background for Wilde is beyond me. If they had just made him a Frenchman in the first place it would have made more sense. Not like Wilde never did a French accent effectively on the screen.